Democratic Equality

  • Whig leaders' goal
  • Horace Mann "make Republicans"
    • p. 19 "It may be an easy thing to make a Republic, but it is a very laborious thing to make Republicans; and woe to the Republic that rests upon no better foundations than ignorance, selfishness, and passion."
  • SS Curriculum envinces goal (the arts too)
  • equal treatment
    • promoted by common school (no leveling)
    • removed religion
    • mainstream special ed
  • equal access: provide schools for all, higher ed too

Social Efficiency

  • vocationalism
  • practical education, "needs of employers"
  • lofty (president) to practical (fill jobs)
  • logical economic success; education as investment in society's needs
  • stratified school structure
  • words toward greater inequality
  • tracking/leveling
  • learning at all levels

Social Mobility

  • credentials to get ahead
  • educational consumers, individual status stressed
  • education as a private good
  • benefits are selective and differential
  • promotes stratification
    • graded hierarchy
    • qualitative differences of institutions
    • opportunities in each institution
  • move up v. maintain status (differing perspectives of those of this perspective)
  • intense competition
  • affordability
  • extrinsic value (from learning and acquiring) in a job
  • meritocratic form of education

Historical Patterns of Goal Ascendancy